AMERICAN NOTES: Presidential Perceptions

One of Richard Nixon's most persistent
Watergate defense themes is that he will never do anything to
weaken the institution of the presidency. A study of children's
attitudes toward the office by Political Scientist F. Christopher
Arterton of Wellesley College indicates, however, that the Watergate
scandal already has profoundly altered at least one small group of the
younger generation's perceptions of the presidency.

Writing in the current issue of Political Science Quarterly, Arterton
cites a national 1962 study that indicated that children in the third,
fourth and fifth grades overwhelmingly idealized the President, viewing
him as "benevolent, omniscient, omnipotent,...